Otto Skorzeny

Otto Skorzeny (12 June 1908-5 July 1975) was a Standartenfuhrer of the SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. Skorzeny was a major leader of Adolf Hitler's commandoes of the SS during the war, and took part in the 1943 rescue of Benito Mussolini, the 1944 Operation Greif during the Battle of the Bulge, and the 1945 organization of the Werwolf guerrillas.

Biography
Otto Skorzeny was born on 12 June 1908 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria) to a middle-class Polish-Austrian military family. Although he was middle-class and was intelligent in speaking fluent French and English, Skorzeny did not taste real butter during his teen years during an age of austere life that followed the Austrian defeat in World War I. In 1931 he joined the Nazi Party of Austria to escape from this life of poverty and joined the SA (the original form of the SS), although he bravely saved the life of Austrian president Wilhelm Miklas, defending him in his house imprisonment from the Austrian Nazis.

After the Anschluss annexation of Austria, Skorzeny worked as a civil engineer, and in 1939 his appliance for the Luftwaffe of Nazi Germany during World War II was rejected due to his tall height. He was also 31 years old, too old for aircrew training. He became a member of SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the unit of SS members who served as Fuhrer Adolf Hitler's bodyguards. Skorzeny was later assigned to fight with the Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS in the Netherlands, France, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During Operation Punishment he captured a large Yugoslav force and was made a Lieutenant in the SS.

As a member of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, Skorzeny went to war in the Soviet Union and fought the Soviet communist Red Army. He was assigned a mission to destroy the dams around the Soviet capital of Moscow and capture the Lubyanka NKVD headquarters during the November 1941-January 1942 Battle of Moscow, but the mission was called off when the Germans were defeated. In 1942 he was hit in the back of the head by Katyushka rocket shrapnel, and was cured by aspirin.

In the summer of 1943, he began his first major operation, Operation Francois, by sending the 502nd SS Jaeger Battalion to Iran to incite a rebellion by the Qashqai tribes against the pro-Allied shahdom of Iran. He also took part in a raid on Gran Sasso in Italy to rescue imprisoned fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on 12 September 1943, in addition to an attempt to capture Josef Broz Tito in May 1944 (Operation Knight's Leap), the kidnapping of the son of Fascist Hungary's dictator Miklos Horthy in October 1944, (Operation Armored Fist, the infiltration of US Army ranks to sow confusion and assassinate General Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Battle of the Bulge (Operation Greif), and the organization of suicide bombers and Werewolf SS partisans.

Towards the end of the war, Skorzeny helped to set up ODESSA, an organization whose goal was to establish ratlines for Nazis to escape to Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Bolivia after the war. He was acquitted of war crimes involving a breach of the 1907 Hague Conference in his dressing of his men as US soldiers during Operation Greif, and he later moved to Egypt to help Mohammed Naguib's Arab government in a military adviser role during the 1950s, in a time of conflict with the Jewish state of Israel in the Middle East. Skorzeny was also a double agent during the postwar years, running the ratlines of ODESSA while also helping Mossad track down Nazi scientists in Egypt. He died of cancer in Madrid, Spain on 5 July 1975.